Image Courtesy:indiatoday.in
The local TV channels, the staple mental fare for many locked at home, are beaming hours of solemn oath-taking by new MLAs, and flowery praise of the new ‘dynamic CM who gets things done’ but even they are forced during news time to face and show the harrowing shambles Covid care is in the state. and the ordeal of the common people during this explosive health-crisis.
They do not remind viewers that even in late April the then Health Minister, who is now heading the government, sounded confident that the second and deadlier wave was yet to arrive in the state and energetic steps could be taken promptly as soon as it made landfall. The idea perhaps was that it would fly in in some kind of super-missile and yet would allow a time for putting up defences. The poll results were declared on May 2 and the next two days were filled with triumphant celebrations. Then nearly a costly week of suspense before choice of the Chief Minister by the alternative High Command.
Meanwhile, the health services were left in doldrums as the one person ‘leading from the front’ was missing from the scene during the interim, and in the face of surging infection and severe wants and strains in the supply of essential life-saving items the doctors and nurses and paramedics were simply at a loss to handle the situation worsening by the minute. The second wave had already made its footprints visible in all major towns and were spreading fast to rural areas.
The toll must have been substantial though there are no independent data apart from that supplied by the administration. By the time the new CM had taken up the reins after being feted and extolled, soon there were several oxygen plants working in hospitals and elsewhere, though scores had in the meantime succumbed to hypoxia and breathlessness. It then appeared mere supply of oxygen would not overcome the menace and there was a universal outcry for vaccines. The authorities assert there is absolutely no shortage of oxygen cylinders and vaccines, though the Union Ministry of Health has boasted that there was a stock of twenty million doses of vaccines for states to lift and Assam alone has a population crossing thirty million. At least three-quarters of that would have to be vaccinated.
If you want to administer oxygen you will at least need a bed and there are simply not enough beds around when the daily surge is said to be more than six thousand. In many Covid centers the sick are left prone on their beds without medical attendance and medicines and with drought-hit bathrooms. This is what this writer gathers from videos in circulation. The local press reports that private hospitals are fleecing poor people of their life’s savings and driving them into ruinous debt.
They crowd there as, with a few exceptions, government hospitals are said to be woefully short of staff, medicine and essential items. It has been reported that public distrust is so deep that people ‘feeling unwell’ and probably Covid-positive conceal their real condition and move around freely until matters turn critical. The daily death-toll now hovers around ninety and one frequently hears of acquaintances falling ill or collapsing. We have not yet had scenes like bodies floating down rivers or the horizons lit up by rows of burning pyres. But things are disturbing enough.
The situation has definitely arisen out of a certain pattern of crucial policies as well as a kind of leadership launching them. First, while people talk about a systemic failure, there is actually no system in place, at least no social system. What you have in place is a bureaucratic machine-like apparatus where human cogs are left without any human initiative or warmth. It responds to commands down the levels and the sick are so many figures on a data sheet. At the apex of the pyramid there is one person from whom all vital decisions flow. It is just about adequate (that too only in towns) in normal conditions, but in a pandemic of this scale this is simply unworkable. The aversion to sharing and delegating power and responsibility runs so deep that the resourcefulness, resolution and courage of the people are simply left untapped, and everyone is in panic and unprovided for. People mourn their loved dead and feel a creeping despair.
This runs into a consistent neglect of expert scientific opinion in the leadership, which cherry-picks ideas out of political expediency. So when experts were saying, look out for the second wave, earlier preparations were folded up or left to decay. Meanwhile spiritual charlatans peddled contempt for modern medicine and succour in timeless wisdom of the shastras. The only experts who matter are political wizards armed with that esoteric wisdom.
No. This has got to stop. We must strive to restore a social system that encourages co-operation, collaboration and faith in people’s creative energies, and eliminate political and cognitive quackery. As Bertold Brecht’s Galileo:” Unhappy is the land that is in need of heroes”.
*The author is a highly respected Assamese intellectual, a literary critic and social-scientist from Assam. Views expressed are the author’s own.
Other pieces by Dr. Hiren Gohain:
On academic and other freedoms
When the State conspires against its Citizens